Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Center: From The Naïve and the Sentimental Novelist
    The Center: From The Naïve and the Sentimental Novelist
    The Center: From The Naïve and the Sentimental Novelist
    Ebook34 pages24 minutes

    The Center: From The Naïve and the Sentimental Novelist

    By Orhan Pamuk

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A Vintage Shorts selection.

    Taking us through his journey as a novelist and as a reader, Nobel Prize-winner Orhan Pamuk explores, with extraordinary insight, what constitutes what he calls “the center” of a work of fiction. Looking to works by writers as varied as Herman Melville and Virginia Woolf among many others, Pamuk examines the deeper reaches that emerge when we, as writers and readers, suspend our judgments and search for meaning inside the pages of a book, encouraging us all to do the same.  

    An ebook short.  
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 29, 2019
    ISBN9780593082287
    The Center: From The Naïve and the Sentimental Novelist
    Author

    Orhan Pamuk

    Orhan Pamuk is the author of such novels as The New Life, The Black Book, My Name Is Red and The White Castle. He has won numerous international awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. He lives with his wife and daughter in Istanbul.

    Read more from Orhan Pamuk

    Related to The Center

    Related ebooks

    Literary Criticism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Yasmin Zaher

      Jun 12, 2024

      Yasmin Zaher
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Hearing Voices and Talking Back: On Bibliomancy

      Mar 29, 2018

      I. Bibliomancy is a form of divination in which one consults a book for answers and advice. The process is simple: Stand the book up on its spine. Ask your question. Let the book fall open to a random page. With your eyes closed, place your finger on

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Our Moment of Collective Rupture: The Millions Interviews Edie Meidav

      Jun 13, 2022

      "I wanted the story to behave as a kind of Aeolian harp, a moment being played as if wind on strings." The post Our Moment of Collective Rupture: The Millions Interviews Edie Meidav appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Craft Corner: The Millions Interviews Samanta Schweblin

      May 27, 2020

      All writers have something of the voyeur about us. We want to look at others in order to understand ourselves. The post Craft Corner: The Millions Interviews Samanta Schweblin appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Nicole Krauss on Fame, Loss, and Writing About Holocaust Survivors

      Oct 21, 2010

      The National Book Award-nominated author discusses her books "The History of Love" and "Great House"

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ain’t That Pretty at All; Or, Going to the Tigers

      Oct 28, 2022

      Like most people, I would often prefer to be someone else. Ideally, the prose this other self would write would not be like mine at all. The post Ain’t That Pretty at All; Or, Going to the Tigers appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Why Is This Story Being Told?

      Aug 20, 2018

      If you have ever been in a writing workshop, especially of the MFA variety—and good for you if you haven’t—you are likely familiar with the most dreaded response a piece of writing can get. It can be phrased in a variety of ways, sometimes hedged and

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      5 Ways Into Your Lyric Essay

      Dec 11, 2023

      When we think of “structure” in writing, we often imagine rigid rules, like a throwback to high school English. But creative nonfiction (the practice of telling true stories using conventions of fiction such as plot and character development) invites

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      An Interview With Bianca Stone

      May 1, 2023

      An Interview With Bianca Stone
      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Elisa Gabbert

      Dec 2, 2022

      Elisa Gabbert reflects on 2022 through the books she read. The post A Year in Reading: Elisa Gabbert appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Anne Yoder

      Dec 21, 2019

      I was nonplussed by the clarity of his name and my seeming lack of connection to it, and so I followed this thread to see where it led, if it did. The post A Year in Reading: Anne Yoder appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Chronicling Life’s White Machine

      Jul 31, 2017

      It is not hard to mentally recast writers as social media types: Knausgaard, the maximalist oversharer; Lerner, the pomo ironic; Cusk, the reticent philosopher; Heti, the more traditional diarist.   The post Chronicling Life’s White Machine appeared

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Apply Aesthetic Pressure to the Language: An Interview with Paul Harding

      Jun 18, 2018

      This interview first appeared in Chinese at the Shanghai Review of Books on June 3, 2018. I spent my first Iowan winter day at home reading Tinkers, the 2010 Pulitzer Fiction Prize winner. Outside, snow began to fall. I poured myself a cup of hot tea

      19 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Trevoeuvre in Review

      Aug 29, 2023

      On September 21, 2021, I published the introduction to the William Trevor Reader here at The Millions. Today, I’m publishing the conclusion. The post The Trevoeuvre in Review appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The World The Book Can Build

      Oct 13, 2021

      The World The Book Can Build
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Hard to Get: Books That Resist You

      Jan 30, 2019

      1. Recently, for the fourth or fifth time in my life, I started trying to read James Salter‘s A Sport and a Pastime. I bought my copy many years ago, after falling in love with his story collections and enjoying Light Years, probably his best-known n

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Nailing the Walkaway

      Nov 18, 2021

      Imagine you have an ideal reader, someone receiving your book the way you wish it to be received. Now imagine they have just finished the final page. In a word or a phrase, what is the feeling the reader has at that moment? The post Nailing the Walka

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Shelf Life

      Feb 2, 2023

      ‘I came across this when I was ten years old. A set of the books was gathering dust in the class-room cupboard and my teacher recommended it to me. The book had a battered blue cloth cover and the names of a dozen or so pupils who had been issued the

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      On The Cult Of Craftism

      Oct 14, 2022

      If craft is a writer’s fundamental heartbeat, then craftisim is hypertension. The post On the Cult of Craftism appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency

      Jul 14, 2017

      I read non-fiction books that I thought might indirectly tell me something about fiction, even though they were really about something else. The post Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Particles Of The Genuine

      Dec 1, 2024

      Particles Of The Genuine
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Rebekah Bergman

      Jun 14, 2023

      Rebekah Bergman
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Center

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Center - Orhan Pamuk

      Cover for The Center

      Orhan Pamuk

      Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages.

      ALSO BY ORHAN PAMUK

      The Red-Haired Woman

      A Strangeness in My Mind

      Silent House

      The Naïve and the Sentimental Novelist

      The Museum of Innocence

      Other Colors

      Istanbul

      Snow

      My Name is Red

      The New Life

      The Black Book

      The White Castle

      The Center

      from The Naïve and the Sentimental Novelist

      by Orhan Pamuk

      A Vintage Short

      Vintage Books

      A Division of Penguin Random House LLC

      New York

      Copyright © 2010 by Orhan Pamuk

      All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2010. Reprinted by special arrangement with Harvard University Press.

      Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

      The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for The Center is available from the Library of Congress.

      Ebook ISBN 9780593082287

      Cover design and illustration by Madeline Partner

      www.vintagebooks.com

      a_prh_5.4_148359083_c0_r2

      Cover

      About the Author

      Also by Orhan Pamuk

      Title Page

      Copyright

      The Center

      The center of a novel is a profound opinion or insight about life, a deeply embedded point of mystery, whether real or imagined. Novelists write in order to investigate this locus, to discover its implications, and we are aware that novels are read in the same spirit. When we first imagine a novel, we may consciously think of this secret center and know that we are writing for its sake—but sometimes we may be unaware of it. At times, a real-life adventure, or a truth about the world learned through first-hand experience, may seem much more important than this center. There are other times when a personal impulse, or the desire

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1